Michelle Yeoh

The legendary action star has had her biggest year yet. Defying expectations, on- and offscreen, is what she does best.

Even before the phrase "tiger mom" officially entered the lexicon, Michelle Yeoh had spent decades playing one. Many of her roles, particularly in American movies, have been variations on a theme of an opaque female figure you want desperately to impress. As Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Yu Shu Lien, she is a reluctant and restrained mentor, battling her own desires; as Memoirs of a Geisha's Mameha, she stress-tests her rookie in the pursuit of perfection; and as Crazy Rich Asians' Eleanor Young, she flatly tells her son's girlfriend, "You will never be enough." She even sneers at James Bond-"Why, are you trying to protect me?"-in Tomorrow Never Dies. But it wasn't until her performance as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant mom whose life is falling apart despite her best efforts, in the critically acclaimed Everything Everywhere All at Once that Yeoh cracked open the myth and internal workings of the inscrutable tiger mom, laying bare her emotions, disappointments, hopes, and dreams, thanks to a combination of absurdity (hot-dog-finger fighting) and raw emotional scenes. For Yeoh, at 60, it's her bravest and scariest role yet, which is saying something for the woman who regularly performs her own action stunts.

Viewers have reacted to the intensity of Everything Everywhere. When Yeoh was in Paris at the couture shows earlier this year, sitting front row at Balenciaga and Schiaparelli, a young girl of

Asian descent came up to her: "I watched your movie, and..... She was crying so hard that she wasn't able to finish her sentence. But Yeoh knew what she wanted to say. "I have younger people come up to me and say, You've changed my life. You made me realize that there are so many things that I can do."